More than two-thirds of marketers say they’re not confident their campaigns are reaching their target audience, according to research from Greenlight.

Some 54% of respondents said they were unsure whether their marketing campaigns were actually reaching the people that matter most.

Of those who did recognise the most valuable channels for their campaign, 17% are not putting their spend towards them.

A lack of insight on social channels means marketers are failing to reach audience

The research, which consisted of feedback from over 200 UK digital marketers, found 35% spent their marketing budget on social media campaigns despite only 23% of customers wanting to be reached via that medium.

The case was similar for content marketing, which saw 21% of marketers funding campaigns in a format that only 3% liked to use.

The findings correlate with other research in the field, which found the

biggest challenge marketers faced was identifying their audience

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Marketers aren’t utilising data to view impacts and guide their decisions

This could be a result of failure to overcome the challenges of multiple data sources, with many marketers admitting they struggled to track online (44%) and offline (35%) spend.

Andres Pouros, CEO and co-founder of Greenlight, said: “This [research] is down to some digital marketers not being able to identify their key audience and ensuring they take the next steps to target them through the right channels with the right messaging.”

Furthermore, customer acquisition cost, site traffic and impressions were the most common measurement metrics among 31% of marketers. But engagement held slightly less priority, with 29% measuring interaction with customers.